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Schools

Learning lessons in life, for life

A prevocational program prepares exceptional education students to be independent and successful as adults.

By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE
Published October 19, 2006

INVERNESS - Enter any Citrus County school and look at the employees. They are wearing identification tags.

Any of the newer tags may have been manufactured by Inverness Middle School exceptional education students.

Teachers Carron Fights and Wenona Scott are in the business of preparing these students to be as successful and independent as possible. Toward that end, with the support of exceptional student education specialist Robbie Garvin and principal Bill Farrell, the teachers have developed a prevocational program.

It started last year, but is in full swing now. "The teachers are introducing the students to pre-job or job skills," said Garvin, 40. The goal is to help the students be as employable and independent as possible.

"It carries right over to the high school program," she said.

After mornings of academics, students in both teachers' classrooms work on projects that develop all kinds of skills.

Fights' students make the identification tags. To do so, a student must enter the employee's information into a computer, transfer the printed material to the cutting board, assemble it and sort the tag for delivery to the proper school or district location.

Another activity in Fights' room is processing lost and found clothing that has passed the 30-day claim time.

The clothes are laundered (they have a washer and dryer near the classroom), sorted by size, folded, sorted again by item and placed in the classroom clothes closet.

This closet is a source of clothing that the school's clinic and guidance staffs tap to meet student needs.

In Scott's class students use the Gravograph machine to make name/location plates. These plates not only identify every classroom, they are used to indicate the function of other rooms, such as restrooms.

The students will make the plates that include Braille. Scott has a visually impaired student who will be responsible for quality control.

Like the name tags, the teachers expect their students to make name or location plates for district buildings throughout the county. In the future, they hope, perhaps, to be able to make the nameplates for student trophies.

Scott's students also assemble furniture that arrives at Inverness Middle. They recently put together a bookshelf and are working on a desk. "It's a real life skill," Scott said. This saves time for the custodians to attend to other projects.

Together the two classes are working on running a Spirit Store in Scott's room. They'll begin by selling "Big Blue" T-shirts. The students will have to check inventory sheets, categorize the shirts, fold them and display them.

They'll have to go through an application/interview process to run the Spirit Store, which will be open before and after school and during lunches.

Fights' class will be making spirit buttons to sell at ball games and in the store.

Both classes made a commercial to advertise the Big Blue shirts on the school's Morning Show. They wrote, directed and starred in it. As the store makes money, inventory will grow.

Scott's class receives the Market Day forms, which have to be counted and distributed to the teachers' boxes. This, Scott said, requires office etiquette and a lot of focus. (Market Day is a grocery/school cooperative that the schools use for fundraising.

Both classes collect Campbell Soup labels and General Mills box tops and share the benefits.

The prevocational program, the teachers say, helps keep the students interested in school. Attendance is good. "It really helps their self-esteem," Fights said.

Garvin agreed. "They want to learn and they want to be in school with these teachers."

[Last modified October 19, 2006, 06:30:42]